PassingNotes.com

okay, now this is just so dumb and so poorly executed that i want to chew my typing hand off (with my recently whitened teeth) - and i feel soooo bad for the talented coders who spun their wheels on this thing…forbes.com is trying to launch an org chart wiki - the “big news” was tucked away in a little box on page 16 of the may 7th issue (which, btw, is about half ads - total bullshit, making forbes like ‘vanity fair‘ for the business community, though in the case of vanity fair, ‘long articles‘ do count as literature in most american college classes)…

so where was i? what the shit? what was i talking about? oh yeah, this fucking orgchart wiki thing…so clearly these dudes either partnered with or completely and totally ripped off the folks behind cogmap.com (an orgchart building web 2.0 thing started by some dudes who might be reading this just now going, “forbes did what? forbes is total vanity fair bullshit“)…oh, and forbes.com actually has a link to this wiki-shit-generator right on the homepage (as of today anyways, sunday the something of may, i mean april)…here you go, click on through if you feel so inclined: forbes orgchart wiki

the big problem: the data that they provide (boards, execs and so on) is plain and far too easy to infer structurally to benefit from an org chart online…but the BIG problem is that no registration is required to fuck with the data (as in, i myself took the time to promote several marzipan level execs earlier this week at many of the fortune 500 - and congratulations to all of you, especially you ‘lil abner!)

the real BIG problem (bigger than the ‘big problem’ and also considerably larger than the second BIG problem which made use of ALL CAPS up above): let me give it you in question form forbes, “why in fuck’s name would any researcher give up this information, contribute such information where it violates corporate policy - or otherwise contribute valuable information to your site with no benefit of any kind?” you’ll have better luck with a little paypal button that simply says, “hi! forbes is scrapin’ by, care to help out?”

so yeah, as a CI dude who has actually been paid very large sums of money to dig into large organizations for assorted information, i can tell you that in many cases a well built org chart can help one to understand how an organization is directing or shifting emphasis (by product, channel, location, function, etc)…if i know that, then why on earth am i gonna give it to forbes.com? are you really that slow on the uptake?

dudes, you run a business mag and web site, don’t you already know that nobody does shit for free for anybody? my advice: take it down and use the development dollars to help cogmap privatize their service such that individuals and enterprises can subscribe to private and shared org charts, otherwise there’s nothing going on there…want more advice? then feel free to ping me directly because i’ve got a lotta expertise in this particular niche (those corporate orgchart exercises, the dark market for such information, the buyers and suppliers, the end users etc)

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hmmm, so i’ve been way busy but wanted to try to get back to blogging at least once a week (!)…maybe…thought that since folks are always emailing with requests for tools and resources, it might make sense to throw out a bunch of quick round-ups for readers…with that in mind, here’s another batch of things to play around with, along with ratings from ‘useful’ to ‘pretty much bullshit’ (yes, i’m a huge fan of hard science and reason)

ibegin source - unfuckingbelievable, one step closer to a free hoovers!!!
useful? no words to describe it…
http://source.ibegin.com/ - please just go look at this and tell me this is not the first step toward the ultimate open source hoovers, wiki style…they’ve got business data for all, and it is FREE for personal use, and they have (for commercial) map elements, phone etc….now just add a layer that is not ‘yelp’ and instead real business insight and voila - a free version of dun and bradstreet meets hoovers…just cull the web sites, autofill the execs and all of that…please, please, please ibegin, please work more on this…

zudos - monitor what people are saying all over the interwebs
useful? yes
http://zudos.com/ - very nice little tool, considering that people used to actually pay serious cash for this kind of service

google image ripper - just the images, no bullshit
useful? compared to froogle.com, sure, but very niche application…
http://dearcomputer.nl/gir/ - self explanatory, skips the bullshit, gives you pages of images (very useful if you need to extract and archive product images for a large project, or if you’re mark cuban back when he used to collect porn)

delexa - rank domains by tags and keywords
useful? convenient, but so is pissing by the side of the road
http://www.delexa.org/ - this is really a bit of a mashup pulling data from multiple other sites, but quite useful to investigate, for example, possible channel ad focus for select keywords and categories (as in, does yahoo panama really stack up, or was it just a bunch of colorful ads stuffed with echo chamber praise?)

popurio.us - check out a site’s popularity
useful? convenient and clean, but so is an air-dryer instead of paper towel, and sometimes you want the towel
http://popuri.us/ - useful if you’re looking for another one-stop resource to measure a site’s rank when doing evaluation of all sorts of startups…

profilelinker - follow all social networks from one place
useful? just like that service that facebook offered, you know, the one that pissed everybody off?
http://profilelinker.com/ - okay, so you’re supposed to be using this to follow friends - but why not any source? doh. thanks for the free people tracking service guys!

trulia - another way to find out how much some source’s home is worth
useful? as one writer put it (for zillow), “yuppy porn”
http://www.trulia.com/ - like zillow, but with some interesting variations on data sources accessible through advanced search (school district elements, property types, etc - quite useful for very focused regional research and data sampling…

phonemyphone - validate phone lines or perhaps just annoy the shit out of people
useful? yeah, if you’re 12, or if you’re an insane ex-lover, mark cuban, or just feel like playing games with people
http://phonemyphone.com/ - this one will raise hell, since it allows for awful crank calling potential…original idea was to call your own lost phone (under the sofa? oh, ever see that curbed episode where the phone is in her, uh…vj?) - but you might find a valid use, right? okay, so right now: everybody go and register and then let’s all pick one big company like (elgoog?) and coordinate with twitter (doh…)

make steve jobs happy, free your itunes tracks from apple’s DRM!
useful? abso-fucking-lutely (take that itunes collection on over to your zune dudes and dudettes)
http://seidai.50webs.com/ - mac only - this uses the imovie conversion process to strip all drm elements from your itunes tracks without having to waste time burning and then dropping in again (okay, so it’s not a research tool at all, whatever, enjoy it while it’s still around)

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i laughed, i cried, i choked on a jujube…this is truly magical…(it’s a video, so click through if you’re not seeing it via rss)

or visit: youtube (to add to your own youtube video collection)

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okay, so we all remember this bullshit interview with playboy that barry and sergio did a while back, in which they not only blathered on about their do-no-evil mantra, but also went on to rationalize how and why they’ll take ads for wine, but never for liquor, guns and porn? well, apparently times have changed, and though i’m not sure quite when it happened, the bidding must be getting coo-coo crazy on the really hot keywords…let’s start with porn:

porn ads on google

okay, this one is really easy, just hit google and do a search for ‘porn‘ (or ‘get laid‘ or ‘eat pussy‘ or ‘handjob‘ - you get the point). check out the ads running down the right side, and then click on the ‘more sponsored links’ area to see the full roster…i’m not going to do these folks the honor of linking through, but my top ads included simplefreeporn.com, fantasyfinder.com, everythingfreeporn.com, freepornhandbook.com and many others…surprised?

liquor ads on google

so wine is a no-brainer, you can just type it in and up comes the ad block…but throw in beer or vodka (or others) and you get a blank ad slate…but this is odd, simply type in ‘buy beer‘ or ‘buy vodka‘ or ‘buy booze‘ and you’ll get assorted ads…i saw a LOT of ebay - they like to buy up all of those blocks through their relationship with elgoog for volume ad purchasing…

drug ads on google

so this wasn’t really the focus, nor in the title, though i still find it fascinating that elgoog is selling so much ad space to online pharmacies and purveyors of cheap online drugs with zero regard for site review or accreditation (can you say planetdrugs? also try a search for ‘buy paxil‘ or ‘oxycontin‘ or ‘buy viagra‘ or ‘buy sudafed‘ or one of many other big time drugs or currently prohibited items, namely sudafed - in fact, check out a search for pseudoephedrine, the active ingredient in sudafed that’s on the watch list, tons of advertisers)

gun ads on google

guns are a little mo’ tricky…elgoog clearly sells ads for keywords like ‘handguns‘ though direct search yield few sales prospects (oh, unless you count another few links to ebay! again!)…’buying guns‘ turns up another few ads (including my favorite from shopping.yahoo.com, ‘buy guns and more!’)….

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you know, i’ll be totally honest with you…i only spent about two minutes digging up this shit because i figure that’s about right on par with the attention span of most people in the world…i’m certain there’s quite a bit more out there beneath the stones…

…but more importantly, this raises concerns about elgoog’s ad programs…we already heard the shit about the ad reps helping movie download sites gobble up precious keywords to promote sales, but how far is elgoog going with these other taboo categories? clearly they’re full of shit, we know that much, but is there still any kind of line in the sand at that company?

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hey, yeah, i’ve been under water for a while…wanted to write up a bunch of cool tools and utilities that i’ve discovered but to be honest, a lot of them (upon closer inspection) turn out to be shit…so with that in mind, i’ve pulled together a short list of stuff i’ve been screwing around with for research and have used a very scientific approach to categorization:

not shit:

pipl - http://pipl.com/ - a new and really nice ‘people search engine,’ gets great results (for free of course)

craig’s number - http://www.craigsnumber.com/ - gives you a temporary corporate sounding phone number (like a disposable email, but a phone number!) and yes, like allfreecalls it might also be abused, but this is much more slick and clever…

change to link - http://changetolink.com/ - extremely useful…you cut and paste some text into the box and voila, it creates a random web page that you can link to which includes the text…dumb? no way..for example, if i want to send some notes to somebody who does not want to pay for an SMS message in the states, but has free web browsing on his/her phone, these are super fast loading text pages…also great for creating bookmarks for yourself from remote locations…

short text - http://www.shorttext.com/ - same idea as ‘change to link’ but a different name, see which one is easier for you to remember…personally, the two consecutive letter ‘t’s’ are a little harder…

pc names - http://www.pcnames.com/ - this has got to the fastest tool i’ve seen for checking out domain availability…in turn, this makes it an amazingly speedy utility if you need to take some guesses at which domains a company might have registered under their corporate umbrella…

change notes - http://www.changenotes.com/ - a fairly young domain watcher, alerts you of changes to web pages, similar to many others out there but nice watch list feature, easy and fast and an interesting directory (you can find out if others are watching the same page)

useamap - http://useamap.com/ - it’s like a url shortener (think ‘digbig.com’) but for maps and directions…super useful…

sorta shit:

allfreecalls - http://www.allfreecalls.net/ - coulda been ‘not shit’ but i have a bad feeling that rogue researchers are going to abuse this (it will mask caller id concerns)

the fake name generator - http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/ - it works well, but for what? definitely awesome if you’re a total scumbag, but otherwise useful only for the mitnick cronies…

slide share - http://www.slideshare.net/ - billed as a social network and community for corporate wonks who wanna share powerpoint presentations, it’s actually full of existing and recent research on big trends and companies (try throwing in some big company names)…but unfortunately, most of the presentations are so boring that i found myself pulling out all sorts of eyebrow hair waiting for slides to change…

mostly shit:

…oh, far too many to list here, but this one comes to mind: http://www.digg.com

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